Beneath My Feet
by circleofstars
Summary: The Winchesters investigate a haunted elevator shaft. There's going to be trouble!
1. Chapter 1

_Okay, new story from me! Expected to be a shortish multichapter… around 5 sections, but I don't know for sure! Hope you enjoy…_

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Claire let out a long breath, and met her own eyes in the mirror. They were cloaked in carefully applied eyeliner and eye shadow, and were so heavily masked that they barely looked like her eyes at all. Similarly, her face was coated in thick powder. She looked like a doll, or an airbrushed magazine picture. Not like a human being: her human features were carefully obscured. Usually, she didn't wear much make-up. But today, she had felt the need for a mask. For armour.

She told herself that this job was the only chance she'd had in ages – possibly even her last chance, as she was pushing forty and could no longer exude the modern-ness and enthusiasm which was so crucial at interviews. If she wanted a career in journalism, at this stage in her life, this was the only way in. It would look good on her references, even if it was only a tiny local magazine whose offices dominated a single tumbledown building of maybe twenty storeys. Even if the employer had creeped her out at interview, and the whole place made her tense and shaky. It was a necessary evil.

She took a bus to the end of the street and walked from there to her new workplace, taking steadying breaths as she went. The butterflies in her stomach were getting more excited with every step she took, and no amount of deep, calm breathing would relax them. She told herself sternly that she was being ridiculous, and forced herself to step on faster, swallowing paving stones quickly under the confident clicking of her heels. She wished she had worn trousers. She felt vulnerable in a skirt.

The building loomed in front of her, too narrow for its height and towering precariously over the squat, frightened little buildings on either side of it. Grey and forbidding and shabby, drawing itself up further and further with every step she took towards it. Every step she took was smaller than the last, as though her feet were resisting the direction they were walking in.

She told herself, again, that she had no reason to be afraid, that she was being stupid. She took a few long, determined steps, and was at the door, which she pushed open with some effort. It creaked.

The hallway was dimly lit, dirty, and quiet. She walked up to the reception desk where a mousy, hunched up woman in her thirties was typing into a computer. The receptionist didn't look up when Claire approached.

'Excuse me?' she asked. Her voice came out high pitched and shaky, and she cursed herself. _Way to make an impression…_

The receptionist jerked in surprise and seemed to curl in on herself even further as she raised her head to look at Claire. 'Yes?' she said, and her voice was even weaker, barely a whisper.

'I'm here to see Mr Deces. I'm his new PA…'

'Oh…' the woman replied, softly. 'His office is on the top floor…'

Claire waited. There was a pause, and then she asked, hesitantly, 'Should I just go up, then?'

The woman nodded. 'Ok,' she mumbled. Clare headed for the elevator at the end of the hallway, and rode it up to the top floor of the dismal tower block. In the office labelled 'Richard Deces', she found nobody, but a thin, moustachioed man who was manning the photocopier outside the door told her he was on the floor below, 'in human resources, looking for you.'

She headed back to the elevator, but he called out to her as the door opened and she turned back.

'Are you sure you want to work here?' he asked, in a strangled sort of voice. There was something tense and uncomfortable in his face.

Uncertain, she decided to act as if he was joking. She smiled politely, stepped into the elevator, and disappeared.

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Dean Winchester stared blankly down at the open textbook on the table, his eyes glazed over so fully and opaquely that he was no longer seeing the words he was looking at. Why on Earth did they have to learn French in High School? He's never met anyone who spoke it, and if they did, they ought to speak English, too, if they were in America. He couldn't see himself ever travelling as far as Europe – there were enough evil things on this continent to occupy the Winchesters for a good long while. So, _why_ French?

Usually, he made a point of ignoring his homework, but the teacher had threatened to contact John, and he reckoned that would hardly be beneficial to anyone involved, and figured that if he did an assignment for a change it would keep her off his back for another few weeks.

According to the teacher, it wasn't that he lacked ability, he just didn't apply himself. Dean thought that sounded like bullshit reeled out from the Education Authorities' handbook, and had been close to saying so when she had made the threat about speaking to John. Still, the idea of actually _doing_ an assignment for a change was all very well in theory, but in practice depended on his ability to _apply _himself when it was really necessary.

The textbook showed a short article from a French magazine: '_Le ministère de la santé chinois a confirmé lundi 13 août un nouveau décès dû à la grippe aviaire en Chine_,' he read, barely understanding a word. He picked a random word from the sentence, and looked it up in the shabby dictionary he had borrowed from the school: at least if he knew what one of the words meant, it showed that he had made some effort with his homework.

_Décès, _he looked up. 'Death.' He quirked an eyebrow. Maybe, if the article had been written in a language people could understand, it would be interesting.

But, as it was, it wasn't remotely interesting, and he was glad when his father burst unceremoniously into the motel room and gave him an excuse to push the textbook away.

'What's up, Dad?'

Sammy, absorbed in his own homework, looked up almost reluctantly from the chunky biology book he was holding. Dean grimaced at his little brother, although he would have to agree that biology was more worthwhile in their way of life than French was ever likely to be.

John shivered, wriggling out of his jacket and throwing it down randomly on one of the beds which were the main furnishings of the room. 'Hunt, maybe…' he answered gruffly, with a critical look at his sons. _Dean, doing his homework…never thought I'd see the day…_he reflected, with a sort of wry amusement, mixed with pride. He wasn't sure whether his pride was for the son who defied teachers by putting hunting and family above anything school related, or for the son who was for once sitting down with a textbook. Perhaps a bit of both.

'Hunt?' Dean prompted, eager for a distraction which might lead him yet further from the hated textbook.

'Maybe,' John repeated, unhelpfully. The boys waited, not patiently, but at least quietly, for him to elaborate. 'I read about it. A girl committed suicide; jumped down a lift shaft.'

'Suicide…' Sam echoed, sceptically.

'That's what they're saying. But some guy saw her getting in to the elevator. He would swear blind that the elevator was there, and she fell right through the floor.

'Where's this guy?'

'Where d'you think? Psych ward. Disagrees with the cops, so he's crazy…' John replied dryly. 'Well,' he added, 'I guess you can see why they'd think he was a little screwed up…'

'They sent him to a psych ward, just 'cause he said he thought he saw that? Wouldn't it be easier to say that he just didn't see what he thought, or was… I don't know, drinking, or something?' Sam asked.

'Apparently he didn't seem too worried about the psych ward. Positively pleased to be admitted. Guess he had some other issues,' John shrugged, dismissing the witness as beside the point. 'Anyway, I was thinking about the girl… definitely something supernatural about her. Nobody at the office had seen her before that day…'

Dean nodded immediately. 'Worth checking out,' he said, pushing the book another inch away from him, across the table. Sam glanced at him sideways, evidently not fooled about the source of his brother's enthusiasm.

'You up for a visit to the offices of the…' John referred to a newspaper article in his hand. 'The _Enquirer_ magazine, tonight?'

'Hell yeah,' Dean grinned, subtly giving the book another prod so that it toppled off the other side of the table.

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'It sure looks like it ought to be haunted,' Dean commented, coming face to face with the office block.

Sam had to agree, but never missed an opportunity to tell his brother he was being irrational, so he replied, 'Exactly _what _sort of building looks haunted, Dean?'

Dean glanced sideways at his little brother. _Too smart for his own good…_ 'That sort,' he answered simply, and followed his father towards the door.

Considering that it was an office block, and it was night time, the Winchesters were expecting to have to combat some form of security system, but this one proved to be child's play. The doors were locked, but not even alarmed. John found the lack of resistance disconcerting: either the owners _wanted _people to break in, or they thought nobody would be stupid enough to try for some reason that the Winchesters had yet to discover.

'Ok, Dean, can you have a look around on the lower levels? I'm going up to the floor she fell from. I'll meet you in an hour. Don't get into any trouble, and-,'

'Take care of Sammy,' Dean completed the sentence for his father. Sam scowled at the pair of them.

'It's Sam,' he growled, loud enough for Dean to hear, but not John. Dean smirked at him sideways.

'You might as well ask us to call you Daisy. You've always been Sammy, and you'll always be Sammy.'

'I'm fourteen, Dean!'

'I know that, Daisy.'

'Dean!' Sam whined.

'Are you sure your fourteen, Sammy? You sound about eight…'

'Shut up.'

Dean grinned, and ghosted away across the grimy synthetic flooring of the hallway.

'She fell down the elevator shaft, right? So maybe we should look in the elevator…'

Sam shrugged. It sounded logical. He stumped across the room after his brother, his boots clacking loudly on the hard floor. Dean shot a look back over his shoulder at the racket. Sam had never really mastered being quiet.

Dean pressed the call button, and the doors opened immediately.

'If there's any security guards here, they'll have noticed the lift moving,' Sam pointed out.

'If there's any here, they'll have heard you doing Riverdance on the floorboards, so I'm guessing there aren't any.'

Sam scowled at him, again. Dean grinned, turned away, and stepped into the waiting lift. And disappeared.

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_I love reviews! And I won't post another chapter until I've got some. (sulks) ; )_


	2. Chapter 2

**Beneath my feet**

**Chapter 2**

Sam blinked, in denial. _That _wasn't supposed to happen.

'Dean?' he called softly. His mind raced with possibilities: Dean was hiding. Dean had been turned invisible. The elevator was some kind of portal to another realm. Dean had been abducted by aliens. However, reading beyond the syllabus had introduced him to Ockham's Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the best.

Still uncertain, he crept towards the door, and stuck his head into the metal compartment, keeping his feet firmly on the more reliable ground of the hallway.

As he glanced around, the elevator dissolved around him, and he found himself leaning out into an empty shaft. The change was sudden and disconcerting, and he swayed, dizzily, over the void, clinging white-fingered to the door frame to keep from falling.

He blinked hard, again, to clear his vision and, hopefully, make some sense of what had happened. Twisting his head round, still holding onto the doorframe, Sam looked up the shaft and realised that the elevator was several floors above him: he could see its heavy metal hull looming over his head. Its weight and solidity were frightening – standing there with his head stretched out into the shaft, he was inconveniently reminded of a horror film in which a character was decapitated by a speeding elevator, and retracted his head a little.

In a few moments, his head stopped spinning enough to think. The room he had seen had been an illusion, a trick of light – the room Dean had stepped into. His heart tensed, and he held his breath, fearful, as he looked down.

Dean was lying on the unforgiving floor, sprawled out and unmoving. Sam was again overwhelmed with giddiness, and he gripped the door frame so tight it made his fingers ache as he waited for everything to stop spinning. 'Dean?' he called again, with a strangled note in his voice.

Dean shifted, very slightly, but Sam was convinced he hadn't imagined it. 'I'm coming!' he said. He threw a glance over his shoulder, wondering whether it would be better to use the stairs, but dismissed the idea – too slow. There was a ladder in the elevator shaft; it would do.

He took another glance upwards as he stepped out onto the ladder, and noticed a slight tremble in the elevator above him – it had jerked downwards, he was sure. He was filled with a compulsion to leap out the still open metal door and escape before he was crushed, but instead clung on to the ladder as though it were his life source.

Taking a step down, he looked up again warily at the elevator. It had moved, he was sure, it was closer now.

Shaking violently, he sped up, feeling clumsily for the rungs with his feet and shooting up nervous glances at the advancing hull. He was breathing fast and shallow, muttering to himself.

As he looked up again at the weight hovering over his head, his feet tangled around a rung of the ladder and missed it entirely, while his hands panicked and sprang back from the metal supports as though it had burned them. He tumbled back in confusion and terror, landing heavily a couple of metres below, on his coccyx. He swore, using a word his father didn't know he knew.

He gasped, half in relief for having found the ground without being crushed, half in shock at the harsh impact. He rolled over hurriedly, scrambling across the floor, on his hands and knees in the dust, to Dean's side. Dean twitched, this time, definitely.

'Dean?' he asked, yet again, this time with tenderness and concern. Dean shifted, tried to push himself up on an elbow, and moaned, collapsing back onto the floor.

'I'm… alright. Fell on my elbow… hurts… like a bitch…'

'You're lucky you didn't fall on your head,' Sam replied, sympathy bypassed, because he was blinded by relief. He reached a hand out to his brother's shoulder, and helped him roll over, cradling the shattered arm against his stomach. 'Is it just the arm?' he added.

Dean half grinned, but the smile was muted by pain. 'Always the pragmatist, Sammy…'

Sam was irritated, because he had thought there weren't any more words that Dean knew the meaning of and he didn't, but, for once, he let it slide. 'Anything else, apart from the arm?'

'Bruised and battered, but I don't think anything's broken. 'Cept the arm.'

Sam looked critically at the offending arm. The elbow was white and veined, grazed and bleeding very slightly. It seemed swollen, or somehow out of shape, and the forearm was limp and boneless against Dean's stomach. He was white, and he seemed tensed, teeth gritted against the burning in the joint.

He sat in silence for a while, assessing his brother's condition, which he couldn't help feeling was miraculously good for someone who had just fallen ten feet onto concrete. _At least it was only one floor down…_ It took him several minutes to move his focus from Dean himself to the area immediately surrounding him, but when he noticed, he started.

'Dean, you're lying in a chalk outline,' he exclaimed.

'What?' Dean struggled to sit up, and with Sam's aid, wriggled away from the spot.

'It must be where that woman fell… but you were in it…. It could have been drawn round you…'

Dean nodded breathlessly. 'Weird,' he agreed.

'This shaft must be haunted… the spirit must have made that imaginary elevator, and that woman was fooled by it, and then you…'

He cut off abruptly at a creaking noise above him. Somehow, in the relief of finding Dean relatively well off, and of having his feet back on the floor, he had forgotten that he was still sitting below a great weight which could conceivably thrust downwards and crush him at any moment.

'We need to move…' he muttered agitatedly, taking full stock of his surroundings for the first time. The outer door of the elevator was tightly shut, enclosing the shaft like a small, square room with an exceptionally high ceiling. Like a tube, whose plunger was waiting to crash down. And the Winchester were trapped in its line of fire.

Dean glanced up, following Sam's gaze, and swore under his breath. 'I didn't think of that,' he admitted. 'Can you get those doors open?'

Sam twitched his lips doubtfully, scrambling to his feet and jamming his fingers against the crack between the metal sliding doors. It was airtight, and his frantic clawing found no purchase on the smooth surface. He turned hopeless eyes to his brother as a violent jerk several storeys above them rained dust down onto their heads.

'Anything…' Dean paused, screwing his eyes up for a second as a slight movement set the shattered fragments of his elbow grinding against each other in his arm. 'Anything,' he continued huskily, 'that you could use to winch them open?'

'Like what, Dean? The handy pocket sized crow bar I carry at all times?' Sam demanded, impatient with fear as a metallic clunk echoed off the narrow walls.

'Improvise,' Dean replied, shooting hurried looks around the small space for anything they could use. His eye stopped roaming suddenly. 'Pipes,' he choked, indicating a length of copper which seemed to be hanging loose at one end, though the other was fixed to the concrete wall.

'Pipes,' Sam echoed nervously. He spun round in search of them. When they appeared, he stumbled forwards shaking violently, and reached out urgent hands to yank it away from the screws securing the pipe to the wall. 'It's fixed!' he yelped, shooting another glance up. The elevator was retracting now, upwards and away; it looked for all the world like a hammer being drawn back ready to strike.

Dean crawled towards him, one handed, and knelt. 'Move back,' he ordered, snatching a revolver out the back of his jeans. The shots were painfully loud, and left echoes ringing up and down the shaft: one shot, two, three, one for each screw, until the pipe could be easily pulled away from the wall.

Sam grabbed the length of copper and jammed one end into the door, pushing against it. 'I should have known,' he panted, 'that whenever you say "improvise", you mean, "use a gun".'

Dean opened his mouth to answer, but stopped short, as a resounding _clunk_, far above them, seized his attention. Slowly, with eyes so wide he could feel the tension in the tendons around them, he tilted his head back to look up. The elevator was hovering. It was on the top floor, immobile, glaring down at its captive prey. Like a bird, waiting to dive.

It was further away from them than it had been the whole time they had spent in the elevator shaft, and not moving, but something about its character of sitting up there was ominous and threatening. 'Sam…' Dean said quietly, with faint, barely there traces of uncertainty, even fear, in his voice.

Sam looked up, and he felt it, too. For a second, he froze, and the stillness was palpable. Dean, unmoving on the floor, Sam, statue-like by the closed door, both looking up, eyes fixed on the stationary mass on the distant ceiling. The air solidified for a stretched instant in which nobody moved.

The first to move, unfortunately, was the elevator. With another loud _clunk, _it shifted into motion. Downwards. Fast. The distant dark square which was its underside grew, faster and faster, over their heads, filling more and more space, closing the area they occupied and making it more and more like a prison cell. On death row. Because as the hull sped downwards, it showed no sign of decelerating, and its velocity could almost suggest that someone had cut the wire from which it was suspended.

Closer, and closer, heavy, hard death. Unforgiving and unstoppable. Rushing down with the sound of a car passing on the highway, or of blood, pumping desperate and futile in their ears.

Sam sprang into motion, jamming the pipe's end harder into the crack between the doors and throwing himself against the other end of the bar. Dean lurched to his feet and added his weight. Both felt something give. A little, not enough. They kept pushing, with the roaring descent of the elevator increasing in their ears.

It was ten floors above their heads, and still coming. Growling with effort through clenched teeth, Sam felt another couple of inches open up. He could see through the gap between the doors, dark space. He screwed up his eyes and leaned on it harder, hearing Dean cry out behind him in unexplained agony. He didn't turn to see what had caused it, but kept on at the bar.

Eight floors up, and not slowing. The gap opened further, and the bar clattered out of its hold. Sam wedged his shoulder between the doors and pushed them apart with hands and feet.

Five floors. Another couple of inches and they could get through. _Come on…_

The door seemed to have jammed. Sam could feel it digging ruts in his limbs as he forced them apart with every ounce of power in his body. Half an inch… so close.

Three floors above. The roaring of friction as the elevator fell at unnatural speed was too loud for Sam to hear whatever it was Dean was shouting in his ear.

Two floors.

_Not enough, push harder…_

One.

The black hull of the elevator shuttle filled his vision, and he could feel the weight of the compressed air it pushed before it, pressing down onto him as a preview for the coming strike. In the dark, he didn't see his life flash before his eyes.

Maybe disturbed by the vibration in the walls, the doors gave up another three inches to Sam's pressure. He collapsed outwards, pulling Dean with a hand clutched iron-like around his upper arm. Both Winchesters fell heavily onto the concrete floor, and were showered with the dust which burst out as the elevator hit basement, with a crash which shook the foundations of the building.

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_I was told off for blackmail, so this time I'll ask nicely. Review, please!_


	3. Chapter 3

**Beneath My Feet**

**Chapter 3**

The impact seemed to be magnified by echoes, so it was several seconds before the assault of sound and the trembling of the hard concrete floor beneath them subsided. Even afterwards, it took a while for the dust to settle, and longer for the Winchesters to recover the use of their senses. That had been close.

Sam could still feel the shattering intensity of the air in the moment when the door shifted, and he knew that the sight of black metal bearing down heavily on him was one which would haunt his nightmares. Not something you see every day, and not something you could just forget.

He lay, trembling, on the cold floor outside the elevator; one arm wrapped around Dean's shivering body beside him. For a few minutes, all he wanted to do was breathe, and relish the sustained ability to breathe which he had come so close to losing. He felt the grains of dirt between his face and the smooth concrete, and the dust settling lightly onto his shoulders. He felt the warmth of his brother's body beside him, and heard his agitated breathing. He reflected, philosophically, that it was strange, how it took death to make you realise what it was to be alive.

Sighing out a long, shaky breath, he opened his eyes, rolled over, and sat up. Dean shifted beside him, vivid-faced with pain in the dim grey light of the basement, but grinning, like Sam, with the euphoria of evading metal death. Sam let out a breathy, nervous laugh, tilting his head back and drawing cool air hungrily into his lungs. His mirth increased, and Dean was laughing too, even though it looked like it hurt to laugh with those bruised ribs.

Still giggling, Sam rubbed a hand across his face, pressing hard against his skin as if to make absolutely sure it was still there. Eventually, taking another deep breath, he calmed a little, blinking as his face returned to its serious expression – too serious for a fourteen year old. 'Jesus Christ, Dean, that was close,' he breathed, looking at his brother through lowered lashes.

'We're alive, Sammy. To fight another day…' Dean replied, smirking.

Sam nodded wearily. He watched Dean's grin subside, as another pang from his arm flashed through his eyes. 'We've got to get you to a hospital, get that set. It looks pretty badly broken…'

Dean didn't deny it, which meant it had to be pretty bad.

Sam sighed. 'You wait there,' he said. 'I'll go find the stairs so we can get out.'

Dean grinned. 'You don't want to use the elevator, Sammy?' he asked in mock surprise.

Sam gave him his best attempt at a withering look, but his wide, youthful eyes and smooth cheeks were not suited to such an expression of cynicism, and Dean didn't seem to be cowed. He laughed.

'I'm going to look for the stairs,' Sam repeated, and wandered off down the grey corridor, opening doors at random, all of which seemed to lead to store rooms filled with unidentified boxes, gathering dust. Dean sat dejectedly on the floor, waiting. His elbow was throbbing fierily; sending spasms up and down his arm. Every movement seemed to set the sharp fragments of bone grating against each other. He tried desperately to keep it still, but the tension required to avoid moving it made it tremble, and that was equally painful. He tried half heartedly to move the fingers of his hand, but nothing happened. _At least I have an excuse to avoid homework for another few months,_ he thought. _If it involves writing, anyway. _

He glared over at the sluggish elevator, squatting dormant in the bottom of its shaft. It seemed to stare back at him, and to promise that it would have the retribution he had stolen from it. He noticed that the floor around it was cracked and chipped from the force with which it had hit, and found his idle mind conjuring unwanted images of the pulp which had been him and Sam, oozing out from underneath the metal beast. Bones, crushed to dust, indistinguishable from the concrete dust which had clouded up after impact.

He shook his head to clear it, but the gory image remained. He shut his eyes, and it was still there. _I'll never get in another elevator,_ he vowed silently to himself.

A door opened noisily, somewhere down the corridor, and he spun round, though the clumsy footsteps of legs grown long too fast for their owner to coordinate warned him that it could only be Sam.

'There's no stairs, Dean,' Sam called out fretfully as he approached.

'What? There must be… it's a legal requirement. This is the basement. What if there was a fire or something?'

'I don't know, but there aren't any,' he wailed.

For once, Dean thought, he sounded no older than his fourteen years. Still, in a situation like this, when he himself was feeling relatively defenceless, his concern that Sammy should maintain his childish innocence was overridden somewhat by a survival instinct: a frightened and lost Sammy seemed less likely to get them out of this mess.

Fortunately, Dean knew exactly how to bring out the indignant 'adult' in his little brother, and the simplest way to do this was to call him Sammy.

'Ok, Sammy. Don't worry. You just go and take another look, to make sure. It's gonna be ok, Sammy,' he repeated, in case Sam had missed his patronising tone.

Sam drew himself up to his full, not unimpressive, height. 'Dean, I know, I'm not a child. I'll go check again. And _don't_ call me Sammy.'

Dean grinned. Teenage Sam was a pain in the ass, especially when he was trying to show how mature he was, but at least he was sure of himself, and too busy being adult to be frightened.

Sam was away for another short period, in which Dean sat slumped on the floor and absently drew patterns in the dust on the floor with a finger, while his other arm lay useless and limp in his lap. When he returned, he was wearing the resigned look of somebody whose suspicions have been confirmed, rather than the panic he had demonstrated before. He caught Dean's eye as he approached, and shook his head.

'No stairs, dude.'

Dean dropped his head back in defeat. 'I don't believe it. What sort of building doesn't have any stairs? These journalists are screwed up…' he mumbled.

'If we call Dad, he could call the elevator up to whatever floor he's on, and then we could use the ladder…' Sam suggested doubtfully, sighing.

Dean's face didn't change, but he shook his head. 'Can't. One, it'll try to make us into Winchester soup again, and two, I don't think I can climb one-handed.'

Sam nodded. There was a silence, in which both of them determined that there was only one option open to them, but neither wanted to say it out loud.

'Call Dad anyway. He'll probably want to know where the hell we got to…'

Sam produced a cell phone, whose screen had been cracked at some point in the evening's excitement, but it seemed to be still working. 'No reception. We're in the basement…'

Dean sighed. There was another pause, both Winchesters hoping the other one would come up with an idea which was preferable to what they were thinking of. Eventually, reluctantly, they met one another's eyes.

'Dean… I think the only way out of here is to…'

'I'm not getting into that elevator, Sammy,' Dean blurted, without thinking. The words just fell from his open mouth.

'Dean…'

He closed his eyes, and inhaled slowly. 'I know…'

Sam nodded, shooting a nervous glance at the waiting elevator, glaring at them from under its mantle of dust.

'There's something seriously wrong with this building, man… You'd think they wanted to use the basement for cells or something… no stairs…' Dean grumbled. He thought maybe he'd just developed a phobia of elevators. He was sure the steel hulk was beckoning him.

'It's controlled by the spirit,' Sam observed, unhelpfully. The childlike uncertainty was creeping back into his voice. 'If we get in there… it could do anything with us…'

Dean sighed. 'Well, if we stay here, it'll take us months to starve to death. It's that or get in the damn elevator, and now's as good a time as any.' He leaned on Sam with his good arm as he stood, and found that his legs were weak and shaky, but still, he stood up without too much difficulty.

Sam stood up shakily beside him. 'It's just one floor's distance…' he conceded. 'What's the worst that could happen?'

Dean gave him a wry look. 'I really wish you hadn't said that, Sammy.'

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_I know it was short, and I'm sorry. Review, please. : ) (or else…)_


	4. Chapter 4

**Beneath My Feet**

**Chapter 4**

John Winchester trawled impatiently through paperwork which was lying around on various desks, without really expecting to find anything, but working on some unshakeable feeling that he should at least pretend to do something productive. The gadgets he had brought with him went crazy around the entrance to the elevator on the top floor, and even more so in Deces' office, where apparently the victim had been directly before her accident. It wasn't unusual for spirits to haunt the places they had last been alive, as well as the places they had died.

So, overall, he had found what he had expected, except that, despite the high readings, there seemed to be no real supernatural activity. He found this slightly disturbing: something wasn't right. Also, though he wouldn't admit it, even to himself, he was disappointed. He was feeling starved of action, recently.

He had heard a resounding crash, far below him, and wondered whether it had happened in the same building or elsewhere. His mind strayed to his boys, but, knowing they could handle themselves, he continued his search. However, the echoes of the crash gnawed at his mind, and he could push away the nagging worry that he should check on them. Dean was eighteen now; he'd be pissed if he thought John was checking on him every few minutes. The last thing he wanted was for his eldest to feel that John didn't trust him. He pushed his anxiety down again, but it stayed simmering.

Gritting his teeth grimly, he returned to the search. Then he realised that he was standing in the doorway staring blankly at the tidy office without lifting a finger to investigate anything. He made a sound which was halfway between a sigh and a growl, and set off down towards the ground floor. There was nothing going on here anyway, and he could use some sleep. They could always pick it up tomorrow night.

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The elevator's interior was a mundane echo of elevators everywhere, with its unpolished silvery walls which offered a pale, blurry shadow of a reflection. Looking into the walls, Sam could see his face as a white smudge in a frame of dark hair, featureless. The minimal reflection failed to create the intended illusion that the space was bigger than it was. The space was small, cubic, and suffocating. The doors slid smugly together with an oppressive, impersonal click. The controls lit up obligingly when he pressed his shaky white finger against the key labelled _ground floor. _So far, so good.

Neither brother said a word: they were both holding their breath. With the usual array of quiet mechanical sounds, the machine purred into life. Sam's ears, suspecting so much to hear threatening _clunks_ and screeching, were set on edge by the ordinary function of the elevator, and he concluded, perversely, that the damn thing must be up to something.

The floor lurched upwards, pushing up against their feet as it shifted into motion. Sam let out the breath he had been holding. Maybe the spirit had gone dormant, having wrought enough havoc for one night.

The elevator picked up speed and alarm bells began ringing in both Winchesters' heads. They had only wanted to travel one floor. Abruptly, the shuttle stopped moving, with a metallic final thud. Sam bit his lip, and met his brother's eyes. He grimaced, and shrugged helplessly, with a look which said, without having to voice it 'well, it was worth a try.'

Dean sighed. 'Stuck in an elevator, stuck in a basement… guess it comes to the same thing…' He tried to shrug, and another involuntary flinch shot through his eyes.

'I could try to make a sling…' Sam suggested doubtfully. He had learnt a little basic first aid at school, and a bit from Dad. He couldn't remember how to tie the correct knot, but thought he could improvise something passable with the limited material available: his jacket.

Dean flinched as Sam gently folded his useless arm against his chest and bound it securely with the sleeves of his jacket. At least it wouldn't move so much now.

'Thanks,' he grunted. He inspected the sling critically, then flicked his eyes around the narrow metal room. 'So, what do we do about being stuck in a lift?' he asked brightly.

Sam had to laugh at his brother's optimism. 'Uh…' he attempted. 'Maybe a mechanic will arrive in the morning…?'

Dean squinted at his brother. 'That the best you can do?'

Sam shrugged.

'Maybe we could get dad to burn the bones…'

'Do you have any cell reception here?'

'No…'

'Maybe higher up… Where was Dad anyway?'

'Checking out Deces' office, I think. And the place she fell from.'

'Whose office?'

'The editor…'

'How do you spell that… De…'

'Dean since when do you care about _spelling?_'

Dean shrugged. 'Curiosity.'

'Killed the cat.'

'Eh, that was never proved.'

Sam raised an eyebrow and shook his head. 'Ah… I think it's D-E C-E-S. Why?'

'Don't know… sounds familiar…' He tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling, deep in concentration, as if he expected to find the answer to his dilemma written there. Eventually, he looked back at Sam.

'Well?'

'It was in my French assignment. Unlucky name…'

'What?'

'I don't think it's important, Sam. I just remembered the word.'

'_What _word?' Sam hated it when Dean withheld information.

Dean shrugged, then wished he hadn't. 'Décès. It's French for death….'

Sam looked amazed, and Dean grinned.

'All these years I been telling you I got hidden depths…'

Sam shook his head, in the age old gesture of little brothers which meant, '_Honestly, _I despair of you…'

Sam shook himself slightly, as if trying to return to a world which made sense. 'Right… so, no cell reception… elevator stuck…' His voice faltered, and he glanced up at Dean's pale, drawn face with nervous sincerity. 'What do we do?'

Dean paused, thinking, for a while. 'There must be reception further up… You could probably get out through a vent and climb up… get Dad to force the doors open for you. And then the pair of you could come back and get me.' It seemed to him like the best available plan.

'Dean, I'm not leaving you injured in a haunted elevator by yourself…'

'It's just a broken arm, Sam. I'll be fine.'

'Couldn't we just wait for Dad to find us… we could yell, or something…'

'Well, if you've got a better plan…'

Dean was cut off mid-sentence. A shriek swept through the lift, high-pitched and frantic, a primal howling of pure terror in all its frightening simplicity. It was raw, and painful, and there were a thousand tiny breaks in the voice that called it. It was fear, condensed into its oldest and purest form. It left the brothers cold and trembling.

The silence that followed was hollow and ringing with the sudden absence of the wailing, and Sam felt an overpowering need to speak into the silence, as if it would somehow erase the echoes of that shriek.

'I… uh, I guess we can say the spirit's still around, then,' he mumbled.

Dean nodded, for once struck dumb by the rawness of the sound, which had seemed to scorch his ears with its power.

Sam gathered himself carefully, and exhaled through his nose in a businesslike manner. 'Right,' he said, pointlessly, scrubbing his hands together to add to the effect. He looked blankly around the square space, and his eyes fell on a square vent in the ceiling. 'I guess your plan will have to do…' he muttered, recognising that he, in fact, didn't have a better one.

It took considerable effort to unscrew the bolt and get Sam up to it, because, although he had grown considerably in recent years, he hadn't grown enough, and was still, marginally, shorter than Dean. Dean, one-armed, couldn't hold him up, so Sam improvised, supporting himself precariously on the narrow ledge which ran round the walls of the elevator at elbow-height, and using Dean's shoulder for extra stability. The elevator was in poor repair, luckily, in this case, because the screws which held the vent cover in place were already loose, and came free without too much encouragement from Sam's nimble fingers. When the cover was finally free, Sam dropped it unceremoniously, allowing it to fall where it might, and Dean dodged warily as it tumbled down and clattered loudly against the hard floor.

Sam stuck his head through the hole, and Dean moved further back out of danger as his little brother kicked his legs frantically as though it would propel him upwards. Narrowly dodging the flailing legs, Dean watched as Sam disappeared laboriously and gracelessly through the ceiling, and then reappeared, peering down through the rectangular hole.

'I'll climb until I have some reception… shouldn't have to go too far.'

Dean nodded, and Sam's disembodied head slipped out of sight. A few seconds later, he heard the shuffling of his brother's feet against the rungs of the ladder which ran all the way up the elevator shaft. He sighed, and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, with his injured arm secure against his chest, and his legs stretched out in front of him. He tried to find the most comfortable position for waiting.

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Sam was standing on the top of the elevator shuttle; he tilted back his head slowly and found himself staring up, once again, into the dwindling vertical tunnel, past the heavy steel cord which the shuttle hung from. Turning, he met the familiar metal ladder, and he sighed in resignation as he stepped onto it. Despite the spirit seeming to control where the shuttle went, he had felt safer inside there with the protective metal cage around him than out here in the mechanical void, where nobody other than the occasional engineer was supposed to venture. He started climbing.

At strategic intervals, he produced his phone and checked for reception, and eventually, maybe twelve feet above the elevator roof, he found some. He tangled his limbs around the rungs of the ladder to secure his position, and then started to dial.

'_Sam? You boys ok?'_

'Hey, Dad… we're ok….' He paused, and wondered why he had said that they were ok. It seemed to have become a reflex: if somebody asks you whether you're ok, say you are. 'Well,' he qualified. 'Dean broke his arm, and it looks pretty bad. We're in the elevator shaft. It's haunted… Could you force the door on whichever floor you're at and let me out?'

'_You're stuck? In the shaft?'_

'Yeah… well, I'm in the shaft. Dean's in the elevator…'

'_You left your brother behind? With a broken arm? What have I told you Sammy…'_

'Dad, we needed to contact you! And it was Dean's idea…' he felt a bit guilty for including this last comment, but it was true, and even John was unlikely to rage at Dean for _telling _Sam to leave him. 'Can you open a door?'

'_Yeah, ok…'_

'Which floor are you on?'

_'Sixteenth…Which floor are you on?__'_

'Not sure... don't go too lo down, though, we need you to open one _above_ the shuttle... Oh, and Dad, I don't know if it's important, but we found out…'

Sam yelped in surprise as the elevator shaft was plunged into impenetrable darkness. With a cry of fear and shock, he instinctively clutched closer to the ladder, throwing out his spare hand to get a firmer hold on the rung. The cell phone tumbled out of his grasp and the sound of it hitting the elevator roof was pitched in such a way that he was sure it had shattered. He opened his eyes as wide as they would go, but the blackness surrounding him was opaque.

He clung desperately to the ladder, so tense that his muscles were trembling. And hoped for illumination.

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When the lights failed, Dean thought for a moment that he had gone blind.

He stood up, and spun on his feet in the centre of the tiny room, with his head tilted back, but could see nothing which might be Sam. He called out his brother's name, softly, but got no reply, and swore under his breath. He stretched his arms out like a blind man, and felt the cool metal walls against his finger tips.

Next thing he knew, an eerie greyish light faded through the blackness, and he turned to find a woman standing behind him: semi transparent, hollow eyed, and staring right at him.

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_You know I love reviews :D_


	5. Chapter 5

**Beneath My Feet**

**Chapter 5**

'Don't scream,' he blurted idiotically, the first thing that came into his head. He didn't want to live through that hideous wailing again: it had been so utterly devoid of hope, as if there was nothing to look forward to in this life, nothing in the world to inspire any kind of optimism. It was enough to make anyone feel hopeless, and in his position, with needle sharp stabs pulsing regularly through his arm, he didn't need any more negative energy.

The figure didn't move, or, thankfully, scream, but stared at him with a disconcerting intensity. He stood facing her, wide eyed and still, waiting for her to act. He waited on, but she just stood there staring, and Dean felt the cold radiating from her, seeping into his bones. He shivered. The expression on her face was almost as bad as the screaming. He wanted to make her move, or speak. Anything to make her stop staring at him.

'I… uh… why are you doing this?' he asked, hesitating. He fixed his eyes on the wall above her head, because although she was the only source of light, it was uncomfortable to look at her. For a moment, he thought she wasn't going to react to his question at all; it seemed to take a few minutes to travel through the air between them and reach her ears. She blinked, and her face looked more human, all of a sudden. If there had been any colour in her face, you could _almost_ have believed she was alive.

'I knew I shouldn't have come to this place,' she whispered. Her grey eyes were fearful.

'You don't have to stay here…' he told her uncertainly. She didn't seem like a malevolent spirit, she seemed frightened, lost, and sad. 'You don't have to hurt anyone else… you can just let go. We can help you…'

'He's controlling it,' she muttered. He wasn't sure whether she was listening to him or not.

'What?'

'The elevator. It's not safe here…'

'Who's controlling it?' he asked sharply, stepping forward impulsively as if to seize her arm. He found himself plunged once again into impenetrable darkness. 'Wait…'he called softly, but his voice seemed to be swallowed up into the opaque blackness. He sighed, and wondered idly whether the revelation that the ghost he'd met wasn't the one trying to kill him was a good thing, or not.

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Sam clung to the ladder, trembling. Fear gripped his stomach in a hot, sick embrace. He couldn't have moved if he'd wanted to, but even if he'd had the option, there was no way he was going to attempt it. Stuck on a ladder, halfway up a haunted elevator shaft in the dark? It was a torture too imaginative for the most creative of his nightmares.

Heavy mechanical sounds above his head didn't help to ease his nerves. Any sounds in the dark are frightening, when you can't see where the sound originates, but sounds so reminiscent of the metallic clunks which had so recently set an elevator plummeting towards his head were even less welcome. His throat was too tight to breathe.

Next, a laboured creak, several levels up. Sam's fingers were so brightly white where they clutched the metal bars that he could almost see them in the darkness. Someone coughed, above his head, and then a voice filtered down to his ears.

'Sam? You there? Can't see a damn thing…'

Sam exhaled, and the pain in his chest relaxed. He hadn't realised that he was holding his breath.

'Dad? I'm stuck…'

'Where? I don't believe the power cut out, that's all we need…'

'Below you… on the ladder…'

'Can't you climb up?'

Sam's voice was small and high pitched, and seemed generally much younger than it usually did, stripped by fear of any pretence to adulthood. 'Dad, I can't see anything. I'll fall…. And it's haunted…'

'What is?'

'The… the shaft. It nearly killed us… Dad, I can't move. What do I do?'

'Sam, it's ok,' John called down, pushing against the heavy doors to open the gap. Sam's voice was disquieting. He sounded so young, and so lost. Sam was just developing into a difficult and argumentative teenager, and one with the trademark Winchester stubborn streak. He didn't admit to being frightened, or to not knowing what to do. This Sam was like a throwback to years ago. He thought, guiltily, that a lot of the time, this one would be easier to handle. But it wasn't a good time for it, right now.

'All right, Sam, listen. You can move, you just need to calm down. Let go of the ladder with one hand… ok? Now reach up until you find the next rung. You _can_ do it, Sam, just try… Got it?' He kept up a constant soft murmuring, and heard the shuffling of Sam's feet brushing hesitantly against the metal rungs. The sound was coming closer.

'Dad? How far up are you?'

'Not far now, Sam,' John replied instantly, though, in the dark, he had no idea. 'Just keep going. Find the next one. Get into a rhythm. It'll all be over soon…' He reached both arms downwards, lying on the floor of the hallway with his head and shoulders sticking out into the lift shaft.

After a few charged moments, his fingers brushed against Sam's hair. He stretched, and found his son's cold hand. 'I've got you. One more step. Ok, I've got you. You're gonna be fine…' He hauled his son out of the elevator shaft, breathing a heavy sigh of relief as the two of them collapsed onto the unpolished floor. He tilted his head back and exhaled slowly. Sam was alive, and the certainty of feeling his weight against his arms was more than reassuring. It was a lifeline, linking him to sanity.

'Sam, are you ok?'

Sam drew a deep breath, then pulled away, sitting up. In the dark, John had to imagine the harder lines going back into Sam's face as he recovered. 'I'm ok. We need to find Dean.'

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Dean spun on his feet, his head whipping wildly from side to side, and his eyes wide open and useless against the void around him. He could feel the air pressing against his eyeballs and the tendons in his face straining as he tried to make his eyes function. Nothing. No ghost, no light. _No hope, _his mind added, unhelpfully. The echo of that scream was still loud in his ears.

He stretched both arms out to the sides, and found the cool metal walls of the elevator pushing back at his fingertips. In the dark, he supposed, it didn't matter how big or small the space was. Either way, it made no difference. If he couldn't see the walls, it should be easy to pretend they were further away. Right?

Instead, the darkness seemed to make the walls contract around him. The darkness itself seemed to wrap around him like a shroud. A black shroud, in a metal coffin.

The silence rang loudly in his ears, broken only by the frantic movement of his feet around the narrow square of floor. The constant shuffling seemed to whisper in the stillness, and then he stopped spinning and realised that the soft sound was still there. It seemed to wash through him, and around him, and it was several seconds before he realised that there were words in the relentless litany. He felt the words, rather than hearing them; they seemed to have no more substnce than tiny vibrations in the air.

'I should have known… should have known… The whole place is dead, I should have known. It's not meant for the living. The people, the building. I felt it before I even got here. I should have known. Not for the living… I should have known…'

'Are you here?' Dean called out, and the solidity of his voice cut through the unearthly muttering like a blade. 'What should you have known?' he added, under his breath, because the vivid contrast between his living voice and the ghost's breath was disconcerting. There seemed to be barriers for contact between life and death, because his words had no effect on the spirit's mantra.

'Should have known… It's not for the living, this place. Why didn't I realise? I should have known…'

Dean tried to remember the name of the woman who had died. He had read it in the newspaper article, in the passenger seat of the Impala on the way here…

'Should have…'

'Claire?' he called, triumphantly. The echo came back to him: his own voice but hollowed out and frightening. It sounded dead, like her. 'Are you… Claire?'

No change. The voice was like a breeze, stirring the air in the elevator to a constant rhythm. Dean sighed. Either she had forgotten her name, or she just couldn't hear him. Still, he hazarded one more try.

'If it's not you controlling the elevator, what is it?' he asked, feeling slightly foolish, as if somebody was watching him, wondering why he was asking questions of the air. He shook off the feeling, and made a wild stab in the dark in the hope of provoking a response in the ghost. 'Is it Deces?'

Instantly, the whispering stopped. The darkness was swallowed into a dull light at a point in front of him, and the figure appeared again, facing him with her dead eyes. Dean blinked, and squinted at her. Even this weak light was painful when he had just gotten used to the impenetrable darkness.

'You shouldn't be here,' she said.

'Why not?'

'It's not safe for the living. I should know,' she added, her face stretching into an ironic grin which looked nightmarish in her hollow face. 'Look what happened to me!' There was an empty laugh in her voice which chilled Dean to the bone. 'Deces…'

'What is he?' Dean asked. He had long ago gotten out of the habit of asking, 'who is he?'

'He's death,' she said simply.

Dean blinked. 'Come again?'

But she flickered out.

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'Dad, we got to find Dean… believe me that elevator… it's not safe. It tried to kill us.'

'Quiet, Sammy,' John replied with measured authority. He wanted to find Dean, of course he did. But, since the boys had come across some actual activity, he wasn't ready to give up on this one yet. He just wanted to complete his study of Deces' office so that he could be sure there were no clues. The papers he had found were dull and above-board, showing no sign of foul play, natural or supernatural. Still, the Winchester stubborn streak was at work again: he didn't want to leave empty handed, and he didn't want to give Sammy the satisfaction of knowing that this search was, indeed, a waste of time.

He heard Sam's intake of breath before he realised anything was wrong, and cursed his hunter's instincts: they should have been better than that.

'Can I help you?' asked a dry voice – dry and hollow, like a grave in the desert. John straightened up and turned. In the doorway stood a nondescript businessman in a nondescript suit and tie. He wasn't a figure who would provoke much controversy anywhere, except for the greyish tinge to his skin which was amplified by the cold light of the flashlight they had found in Deces' desk draw. It wasn't something which most people would notice immediately; it took a hunter's eye to pick up on the wrongness in him. Not human.

'What are you?' John asked. It was a family habit to substitute the word 'who' for 'what', in such questions, and it had caused considerable offence and confusion when the headmistress had approached John on parent-teacher night.

'I am Richard Deces,' the figure replied in its dry voice. 'You shouldn't be here, John Winchester.'

Something clicked in John's head, and he realised he knew the answer to his own question. Grey faced and severe, minor telepathic ability, evoking a feeling of death with every aspect of its appearance: a reaper. But the fact that this one seemed to be running a newspaper was both confusing and disturbing. The way John saw it, it could mean only one thing: this particular reaper was a renegade. And nothing could be more frightening.

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_Review, please. (smiles sweetly)_


	6. Chapter 6

**Beneath My Feet**

**Chapter 6**

John weighed up the implications of this latest revelation quickly in his head. If he was a renegade, he wasn't bound by any law of nature to take only those whose time had come, but was likely to seek death, and to cause death, in order to feed and augment his own power. If he was a renegade, he had probably used the elevator to kill the woman they had read about, and, most likely, several others before her. If he was using the elevator to kill, the elevator was not a good place for Dean to be stuck. But, if he was a renegade, he had given up his immortality with his allegiances. He could be killed. Most reliably, by beheading… Luckily, John had brought a machete with him. Unluckily, he had left it by the doorway when he came in to search Deces' papers.

He stood unnaturally still, both eyes concentrated fiercely on the figure in the doorway, who stared calmly back at him with hollow eyes. He felt Sam's nervous eyes flicking from him to the reaper and back again, filled with uncertainty and anxious for Dean. He could practically hear his son's unvoiced murmurs of 'Dad, we've got to go, we've got to go…'

'What do you want hear, John Winchester?'

'You've been killing people…'

'It's what I do.'

'How many?'

'Counting them would be… vulgar…'

John shuddered. Deces' disdainful remark reminded him of something that a fellow marine had once said when asked, jokingly, how many notches he had on his bedpost. He drew closer to Sam, almost imperceptibly, feeling an urge to protect him from this… machine.

'But…' he began, noticing an unwelcome tremble in his own voice which he had no heard there for a number of years. 'All the people who work here…'

'Are… beyond certain concerns…'

'Is that what we're calling it now?'

'They are more focused on their work.'

'But when was it ever about the work for you, Deces?'

Deces ignored that remark, and stepped further into the room. John eyed his machete, lying unheeded in the doorway, where Deces hadn't noticed it. But he would notice, undoubtedly, as soon as John made a move.

'Luckily for you, John Winchester, you would not make a good journalist, even if you were… _non-vivant_, one might say…' Deces added with a careless twist of the lips which might have been intended as a smile.

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Dean spun round in the elevator shaft, and there she was again. He blinked, wishing the light would either stay on or go away, because his eyes weren't appreciating the inconsistency.

'What do you mean, "he's death"?' he demanded. He had lost his fear of her, having discovered that she was not, after all, the one trying to kill him, and the fear had been replaced by impatience and irritation. This whole situation was becoming old, and too irritating to be particularly frightening.

She stared at him, and he scowled at her. He wasn't putting up with any more of _that_ either.

'He…' she began, uncertainly. He wondered at the strange, living quality of her voice. He had heard ghosts speak before, but this one was different. It was as though she had managed to retain something of herself when her soul was purged by death. There was still some humanity there. She almost seemed to be hovering between the mortal realm and death. 'He causes death. Feeds on death, I think…'

'What is he?' Dean asked again.

'I don't know.'

'Fantastic,' he sighed, slumping wearily back against the wall of the elevator. He was too tired to be claustrophobic, now, too tired to worry about what Deces wanted. The dull throbbing in his shattered arm was making his head swim and his vision sway. The ghost seemed to flicker in front of him, but he wasn't sure whether she was leaving him again or whether it was simply the pain making his eyes malfunction.

He blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, it was dark. He stiffly folded his legs up and sat down on the dirty floor, leaning back against the metal wall. He wondered what could be taking Dad and Sammy so long, and he wished they would hurry up, because he could really use some painkillers.

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John glared fiercely at Deces, and was surprised when his nemesis responded by taking a step back. _I must be scarier than I give myself credit for... _he thought absently. He judged the distances carefully, measuring with his mind's eye the distance from himself to the machete, and from the machete to Deces. Boredom and desperation made him reckless, and he judged the distances sufficient to make an attempt. He heard Sam shift disapprovingly behind him.

He threw himself full length onto the linoleum and reached out blindly, sighing inwardly with deep relief when his fingers closed around the smooth wooden handle of the weapon. He rolled with it in his hand, and pushed himself up to his knees, wielding the blade before him. Before he reached his feet, he realised that Deces had turned, and was staring down the hall, to where the elevator doors, previously open a crack just wide enough for a body, had burst open to the full. A light flicked on in the hallway, painfully bright in the darkness, revealing, through the doors, the thick heavy cables from which the elevator itself was suspended, just a few storeys below. Deces turned back to face him with a triumphant, angry gleam in his eyes.

'I told you I wouldn't kill you, John Winchester. I expect you to return the favour.'

'But you'll kill other people if I don't…'

'Yes. But you can still walk out of here, with your son.'

John noted the creature's use of the singular noun. He wondered whether it knew he had two sons. It seemed not. Something told him Dean was safer while Deces was unaware of his existence.

Leaving was tempting. It couldnn't be too difficult to grab Dean on the way out, wander safely home and leave Deces to his twisted games. However, something held him back. It went against the Winchester principles to leave something free to kill innocents. Deces had to die, before he next attempted to swell the ranks of his private corporate army.

He levelled the machete at the creature's neck, and prepared to swing.

He stopped in his tracks as a snapping sound echoed through the hall.

In the elevator shaft, some of the twisted wires which held the elevator had snapped, leaving their frayed ends limp and useless.

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Dean's metal prison jerked abruptly, shifting down maybe a couple of inches, and he was yanked out of half-consciousness by a sharp sound above him. His tired mind asked, _Now what?_

He found himself pressing his palms against the smooth walls, as though holding on would save him.

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Deces said nothing, but stared diamond-eyed at John with such a resolute expression that he didn't need words to get his message across. John swallowed, hard. The machete trembled in his hand. Sam shifted behind him again, watching mutely with his muscles tensed in horror.

John's fingers loosed around the weapon, but he didn't let it go. He didn't trust this thing to let them walk out of here unscathed. It may claim that it was looking for "good journalists", but he knew reapers fed on death. The temptation to claim three lives, two of them still so young and vibrant, must be overpowering for the reaper.

Sam was moving again. He wished the kid would keep still, all this fidgeting was putting him on edge, and he needed to concentrate.

Impatience flashed through Deces' eyes, and the lines of his inhuman face sharpened fiercely. He didn't need to speak: another shattering snap made his point for him.

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Dean started getting to his feet, but before he managed it, a jolt sent him back to his knees, and he let out a strangled cry, his uninjured arm flailing wildly, instinctively, uselessly, for support. His heart leapt in his chest, and his throat contracted painfully. His eyes were wide with alarm, unseeing in the dark. He prayed reflexively, to nobody in particular, that he wasn't going to fall. He didn't want to die alone, in the dark, unprotected even in a metal coffin. He reflected later that if anyone had heard his prayer, they had probably been shocked by the number of expletives it included.

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Sam risked another sideways step, setting his foot down slowly on the linoleum, trying to make as little noise as possible. He hoped to move so slowly that Deces wouldn't even notice. In any case, the businessman's attention seemed to be split between John and the fraying elevator cable.

_For God's sake, drop the machete, Dad… _

Another step put him close enough to the desk to reach out a hand, as slowly as he dared, and walk his fingers across the dark wood until they closed around the cold handle of a letter opener. Only a man like Deces would have such a vicious looking tool to deal with his paperwork. Sam lifted it surreptitiously off the desk so that it wouldn't scrape against the wood, and tightened his hand around it. He had been practising knife-throwing for half an hour or so that afternoon, while Dean had been pretending to do his French homework. Some of his shots had been passable. He hoped that performing under pressure would make him more accurate, rather than less so.

He glared at his father's back, as if just looking could make him get out of the way. The tableau in front of him hadn't moved: John, machete raised, shaking almost imperceptibly, eyes fixed on Deces' cold, impatient stare. Deces, tensed in warning, then moving, with rapidly accelerating movement, like a spring detonating in slow motion. Turning, flicking a hand towards the open doors.

As the snap rang out, Sam yelped a strangled '_Get down!'_ to his father, and let loose. The blade spun over John's head, and to Sam's thrilled surprise, struck deeply into the back of Deces' neck. Not far enough, though: his head was still attached. Sam congratulated himself on his aim, and realised to his disappointment that Deces was something less fragile than human.

John gave him a look which said _well, you tried, _tinged with exasperation. He sprang back to his feet, hurtling towards Deces.

Deces roared furiously as the knife struck, spinning fiery eyed back to glance at Sam before spinning on and snapping another thread so that the elevator hung by a single, trembling wire.

John exploded upwards, preceded by his weapon, and the heavy blade rang out loudly as it collided with the deeply lodged letter-opener on its way through the reaper's neck.

The action was followed by a moment of stunned stillness, and both Winchesters watched numbly as the head and body collapsed separately to the floor, dirtying it further with deep crimson splashes.

But the moment wasn't utterly silent, because the vibrations of the struggling wire were filling the air. It was clearly approaching its breaking point.

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Two more ringing snaps had Dean's heart pumping so hard that it threatened to break his chest. He crouched warily on the floor, his good arm braced against the floor. He squinted up into the darkness above him, and saw a faint light through the still open vent. It reminded him that Sammy was supposedly coming back for him.

Following on the heels of this thought was the realisation that the elevator shuttle was trembling – and slipping, a fraction of an inch at a time.

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John, for the first time in his life, found himself struggling to keep up with Sam as his younger son pelted down three sets of stairs, leaping two, three, four steps at a time with a careless disregard for the wellbeing of his own spine. He emerged from the stairwell and shot like a bullet out of a gun along the empty hallway to the closed elevator doors. His urgent fingers hammered feverishly against the _open_ button, but to no avail. Although Deces had relinquished his control over it, the elevator was apparently sulking after its cruel treatment, and had chosen _now_ to break down.

Sam threw himself against the doors and yelled, with his face pressed to the metal. 'Dean?!'

'Here!' called a muted, weary voice from behind the doors.

Sam turned, appealing with his eyes to John, who had produced a crow bar (which he had apparently had the presence of mind to bring, unlike his sons).

There was urgency to John's movements which belied the indifference he had seemed to show earlier on. He hacked mercilessly at the metal doors, denting and distorting them. If not for the fact that, due to Deces' death, no ghosts would be arriving to work tomorrow, Sam would have wondered about their reaction to the mess the Winchesters had made of elevator doors on three separate floors.

Eventually John created sufficient space to lodge the bar into a gap and wrench the doors apart. Dean's wide eyes appeared in the narrow space.

'Move back, Dean…' John warned.

Dean obeyed. 'I think it's going to fall… it feels unstable…'

'We're gonna get you out, Dean,' Sam called, shrill with panic.

Dean yelped as the elevator shifted, and he stumbled back against the wall.

The gap widened.

The cable groaned loudly, creaking under the stress.

Sam gasped loudly in the background.

John heaved one final time on the crow bar. The gap widened again. Enough…

Dean threw himself forward as the floor lurched ominously beneath him.

Another creak echoed down the shaft, louder…

Dean tumbled out into his family's arms.

And the shuttle crashed away behind him.

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_One more chapter, probably. Sorry for longer delay – my first ever writer's block! Reward me with reviews:D_

_(btw, if your browser's retarded like mine, the review button works if you hold down CTRL when u press it. Now you have no excuse to not review!) _


	7. Chapter 7

**Beneath My Feet**

**Chapter 7**

For the second time that night, the three Winchesters heard the crashing impact of metal and concrete shattering the dusty air as the elevator hit rock bottom. This, though, made the first collision seem like a pale indifferent rehearsal: it seared their eardrums with its sound, and powerful vibrations pushed up through their feet. For several seconds afterwards, none of them could hear at all, and they watched numbly as the frayed ends of the cables swung erratically in the empty shaft.

Dean shifted awkwardly where he lay on the floor, half on top of his father in a tangle of arms and legs. He felt more battered, he thought, than he ever had in his short but remarkably eventful life. And so tired… His thoughts were hazy, interspersed with the dull persistent throbbing of his injured arm. His eyelids were heavy, several tons each, and unwilling to maintain the effort of holding up, now that he was safely back under his family's watchful eye. Sleep sounded so good. But the arm was a problem: it's throbbing was insistent, and the sharp, searing quality of the pangs wasn't diminishing, even so long after he had fallen.

Sam was twittering, nearby, clearly worried. Dean knew he had to open his eyes; it wasn't fair to let Sammy worry. He groaned. His eyelids were so heavy…

He managed a sort of reverse blink, opening his eyes for an instant and flicking them closed again. Sam's pale face was swaying strangely above him, as if his little brother was attempting some hypnotic tribal dance. He wondered why Sam would choose a time like this to do something so random. Intrigued, he tried again to open his eyes.

'Sammy…?' he mumbled, blinking rapidly, and trying to sit up. 'Why are you dancing?'

'What?' Sam asked, looking at him wide-eyed, as though afraid his brother had gone insane.

Dean blinked a few more times, and Sam steadied a little. He realised that the floor had been swaying just as much as Sammy had. 'Never mind…' he said.

Sam frowned, but he let it go. John's face appeared next to Sam's, also looking concerned, though his face gave away considerably less than Sam's. 'Arm looks pretty banged up, Dean. Think we'd better take you to ER…'

'No… can't you set it? I'll be fine…'

'Dean are you sure…? You seem pretty out of it, maybe you're concussed…' Sam put in. Dean scowled. _Ganging up on me when I'm injured is so not fair play…_

Dean struggled valiantly, and eventually managed to sit up, conscious of the critical eyes of his father and brother, assessing his efforts. 'I'm fine,' he repeated, trying to smile. He did feel better; the world had stopped swaying, and his arm was beginning to go numb by this stage. He tried to look alert, surreptitiously hugging his arm against him as he looked up at John.

'So, what was the bad guy?' he asked, in as close to a bright voice as he could manage.

'Reaper,' John replied. Dean blinked in confusion. 'Renegade,' his father clarified. He'd never been a man of many words. Dean nodded slowly. It made some kind of sense, when reconciled with what the ghost had said to him.

'Dad, let's go,' Sam murmured. He sounded agitated: the events of the night had stripped him of his pretensions to adulthood, and his voice unashamedly stated that he was uncomfortable in this place; he wanted to leave it and all its terrors behind.

Dean felt a similar nagging awkwardness, in the back of his mind. Even purged of its ghostly inhabitants, the building felt spooky. It was probably the neglected and impersonal decor.

Dean nodded in agreement, and clumsily scrambled to his feet, aided dubiously by Sam's grip on his upper arm. John followed the boys' slow but reasonably steady progress down six sets of stairs: the elevator, of course, no longer being an option, even if it hadn't been broken beyond repair.

He listened with a strange mixture of emotions to their soft bickering. He felt proud of them, though neither had distinguished themselves particularly well on this hunt. And he felt powerful affection for them, tinged with amusement. He also felt regret, because he knew that they had both suffered in the course of the night. He knew he had asked a lot of them, and he knew too that he would do so again, and again, and they wouldn't complain. His pride was tainted with guilt, because he knew that they could suffer a lot more before it would make him stop hunting. He wasn't sure how that reflected on him, but he didn't like it much at all.

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Stumbling sleepily down the long staircase, the brothers slipped into their natural state of gentle argument.

'Sam, you don't have to hold on to me. I'm fine. Get off me, man. I'm not an invalid.'

'Don't do that again, Dean.'

'Do what? I don't see how any of this was my fault…'

'Just… you scared me.'

'No... a renegade reaper or whatever the hell it was, _that _scared you. I was just caught in the crossfire.'

'Well, be more careful in future.'

'Right'

A pause.

'Is your arm ok?'

'Yeah.'

'Really?'

'Hurts like hell.'

'Thought so.'

'Don't tell Dad.'

'Why won't you go to the hospital, you freak?'

'Shut up, Sammy.'

Sam sighed, exasperatedly. 'You're impossible.'

'You wouldn't want me any other way.'

'Don't bet on it.'

Another pause.

'Hey Dean? Your French teacher's gonna call Dad. You didn't do your homework again.'

'So not my fault!'

'Yeah, but what are you going to tell her?'

Dean bit his lip. 'At least I learnt the meaning of _décès_. It's gotta be better than nothing.'

'Enough to make up for six weeks of assignments?'

'At least'

Sam sniggered. Then he stopped, and reflected. After a moment he said, 'You ever thought that we're living two different lives here?'

Dean frowned at his little brother. He knew it wasn't easy for Sam, the reconciliation of school life and hunting. 'Nah,' he replied, catching his brother's eye. 'We're just leading one, but it's more interesting than other people's.'

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_Sorry for slow update, hope that was a satisfying ending! Reviews would be nice: I am, as somebody put it, a review junkie! lol_

_xXx Thanks for reading! _


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